Why Demons Probably Exist w/ Dr. Shandon Guthrie

hi welcome to capturing christianity my name is cameron bertuzzi and i'm here today with dr shandon guthrie we're talking about the existence of demons he's produced a book uh fairly recently on the the reality of demons he he talks about some other things in the book and we'll introduce that in just a second but this the whole point of this stream today is to give or at least introduce you to an argument for the reality of demons and the title of this is actually why demons probably exist it's a really cool topic if you saw our stream last week i interviewed an actual exorcist which i highly recommend that you go check out we'll talk a little about that interview today with uh with dr guthrie but if you haven't watched my interview with exorcist father vince go watch it it was really really cool really interesting some interesting stories in there so go check that one out well today like i said i'm here with dr guthrie he holds a phd in philosophy from manchester metropolitan university and is a visiting lecturer of philosophy at the university of nevada las vegas guthrie lectures and speaks around the country at venues including colleges universities and churches he's written a fact he's written a fascinating book the one that i already mentioned to you i wish i had it here he's actually got it on his setup right behind him so you can see the the the cover there i've got it in the kindle it's on the other side buddy there you go yeah uh so it's called gods of this world a philosophical discussion in defense of christian demonology we're going to talk a little about that book today but i highly recommend that you pick it up and read it if you're interested in the subject at all we're about two days not about we are two days from halloween and so that's kind of why i planned this discussion around halloween so we could talk a little about the supernatural you're working on another book on the supernatural too right well so let's do this i introduced you a little bit but tell me more about you your background how did you get interest interested in the existence of demons um what possessed me to be interested in this um yeah well uh i this kind of goes back to the late 90s i remember i was approached by a gentleman who um curiously there were a lot of online internet debates going on and somebody had approached me to want to debate on the existence of satan and at the time i shrugged it off thinking well i think he's just looking to marginalize the christian faith and kind of moved on from that and when i started um engaging studies at fuller theological seminary i remember one of the things that was very interesting to me was in learning about the the temptation narratives of jesus and what's interesting about um the book is that it's a larger project than why i got involved to begin with you see that the book is trying to take on a lot of groundwork in terms of trying to understand christian demonology from a broader perspective a philosophical perspective primarily but i wasn't really interested in trying to prove or disprove the existence of demons at all it was just you know it's part of the furniture of being a christian it's just something that we um that we either believe or or don't and when i was at fuller seminary looking at the the temptation narratives of jesus um it was really interesting to me to think about how satan might have tempted jesus and um around the same time there was a movie out it was a claymation movie based on the life of jesus i think it's called the miracle maker and there they portrayed the temptation account as satan appearing as julius caesar i thought well that that sounds pretty theologically interesting you know i could i could imagine that that you know jesus was whisked away to um a mountainside or you know out into the wilderness um by someone who looked like julius caesar and um thinking about what that encounter might have looked like led me to wonder whether jesus or whether satan had even appeared to jesus in any physical form knowing that of course satan is supposed to be a spirit and so i you know combed the the gospels and saw that it doesn't really give any indication that there is a apparition as it were or any kind of physical manifestation so i found that to be greatly interesting and so i remember speaking with colleagues and folks at the time ministry colleagues you know this would be really interesting to pursue because as i started thinking about what is it satan can do um i was less inclined to traditionally how how people would say that you know satan is capable of all sorts of extraordinary acts can perform these diabolical miracles that satan can inflict um you know physical diseases and so forth and i began to question all of that and so i pursued that into the ground pretty heartily um in pursuing my my phd i i wanted to mention this real quickly for you guys that are watching this if you notice my my setup is a little bit different right now i don't have my bookshelf behind me i actually sold it my wife and i are moving to a new house in the next couple weeks and so my entire setup is going to look a whole lot different i have some really cool plans for the new setup so uh keeping keep an eye out for that i'm actually probably gonna i'm thinking about documenting the whole transformation and just posting that somewhere at some point but i just wanted to give you guys a heads up in case anyone watching is uh was interested in that so here's i wanted to ask you a question dr guthrie about your own personal experience with demons if you have any have you ever experienced something that you would call demonic or heard maybe some stories from other people along the same lines or is this kind of removed personally this is fairly removed for me i mean i would love to be able to sit here and say hey i got this fantastic story of you know these demonic encounters or something of that sort but no i'm coming at this purely as an academic as a christian i'm a committed christian and looking at this through the lens of my philosophical training i've been asked before you know while writing my dissertation have i experienced anything you know bizarre or funny um do i feel like i'm being afflicted or oppressed or anything like that and i hate to disappoint but yeah nothing really um experientially has arisen for me okay fair enough well i will i do want to talk about the interview that i had with with dr or not doctor but father father vince can't remember anyone's name uh we'll talk about that interview a little bit in just in just a minute but let's get to your book so in part two of your book that's the section all about the existence of demons uh you address arguments against demons but then you also give an argument for the existence of demons that's that seems to me like the the structure of the of part two of your book so it's kind of like a two-fold case i also find it interesting in your book that you you say that arguments against demons are not very rigorous at least when you surveyed them there wasn't a whole lot out there it's almost as if in academia demonic anti-realism is what you call it it's sort of taken for granted it's like the you know the null hypothesis i hate using that term but that's what people sort of accept going in is they they accept demonic anti-realism do you have anything to say about that just sort of the dialectic as it stands right now yes it's it's um for folks that might believe in demons it's just an absolute conversation stopper there there aren't any as i began to survey you know official arguments against the existence of demons i really had to help them out and you'll see this in the book it's like i don't really quote anyone per se um in terms of formulating a very clean argument there are some here or there that have you know interesting things to say and then i need to respond to but nobody presents like a three-step syllogism or anything like that to try to show that the demons don't exist and the attitude generally is is uh this is really at the the uh this is low-hanging fruit here this is something that by virtue of just acknowledging that you might believe in demons is itself its own reputation because it's so silly but the common objections that have been raised that i've had to tinker with and try to at least put in stronger light have to do with things like um what i call the incoherence argument for one uh which was raised by uh well it's been raised by by quite a few people a bamberger is a recent scholar relatively recent jewish scholar who raised the objection we see this in friedrich schliermacher who also brought it up and uh basically it will say something like because satan is supposed to be of course a fallen angel and if uh how could an angel in such proximity to god uh be so obtuse as to think that he could be god or be conceited enough to usurp the throne of god or anything like that based on all the traditional stories we know about satan you know an angel would never do that so the idea that there would be a fall from heaven you know just sort of falls flat so i interact with that argument there's also uh concerns about what i call an ethical argument that if demons do exist and they are influential in any way toward wrongdoing in people then it's more likely that they're responsible for it and not the human agents that are influenced which would seem to absolve human beings of guilt but that can't be therefore it's more likely demons don't exist i mean these aren't good arguments they're just they're almost like reaching and i'm trying to put these together um in order to at least make it you know more respectable but quite frankly they're quite easy to dispel and of course we have something like a devil of the gaps argument which we know time and again has been leveled against the existence of god because it follows the same format you know it's this idea that hey um i i we can't seem to explain certain things or certain phenomenon in this world therefore my favorite cause must have done it and they try to hang that on uh demonic realists in the same way it's like well you can't explain maybe certain behaviors erratic behaviors and um epileptic seizures or mental disorders and because it's so pre-scientific that therefore you're just jumping to demons as the you know your favorite explanation but we really know that uh science has come through and has explained these things and therefore demons don't exist so other than that that's pretty much in a nutshell the uh the the landscape of open criticism yeah i think the probably the number one response that you get from people is basically just an incredulous stare just to to look at you like come on come on bro and that that's about it i think for for most people what was interesting is the the incoherence argument that you mentioned in the book it's it struck me as more of like a theological argument because it's really targeting like a particular theological view of the bible as opposed to just the existence of demon simplicitor so that that's that was interesting to me what yeah because what i'm trying to do in the book is to mirror what philosophy of religion has done for the existence and coherence of the attributes of god so this is kind of an extension of that project to try to show how much of what we do in the philosophy of religion with respect to god can actually be examined we can examine you know the figure of satan and his cohorts uh basically through the same processes and there are interesting parallels and you're right the incoherence argument looks like it's an assault against the theology and it is but we have arguments against the existence of god that try to do the same thing right so we have how could god be um all uh all good and free at the same time because if he's all good he can only do that which is good which means he wouldn't be free so you've had you know criticisms leveled against the existence of god for this on the same grounds that supposing god has these particular attributes uh such a being couldn't exist and i suggest that we have similar instances happening with the figure of satan yeah one of the one of the arguments that you talk about and you mentioned it earlier just now that i found the most interesting to think about was the fact that the the angels and well if the demons were previously angels in in heaven with god they experienced god in a different way than we experienced god right now so they they beheld is that the right way to say it they had the beautific vision i don't know how to i don't know how to say all this stuff but that that's what it so that that kind of objection seemed to be really interesting to me because if this being say an angel is in heaven and it is able to understand god in a way that we can't just more fuller and maybe maybe some kind of experiential part of it but the i guess the idea is that someone in that state someone so close to god they would never fall away right that's the argument they would never fall away so demons are not even possible because they just wouldn't fall away they've got this beautific vision and there's no re they'd have no reason to rebel basically and i found that kind of interesting because i i tend to think some along similar lines with what's going to happen to the saints so when we get into heaven this is one of the explanations that a lot of theologians give as to why we're no longer going to sin in heaven is because we're going to behold the beatific vision we're gonna see god in all of his glory and so we're just we're gonna see our uh our sin for what it really is and we're just going to gain all of these insights and so we're not we're no longer going to sin so i see a kind of parallel here between how theologians think about saints in heaven and how these people i think are thinking about demons or angels so what are your what are your thoughts on that right so again this is used as a pushback against the possibility of an angelic fall and we are supposing that that demons are fallen angels i i believe there are good reasons for thinking that but it's not quite as straightforward as somebody might assume but i think that it's a pretty solid conclusion i want to make a distinction between angels in their heavenly state and then the glorification of saints i wouldn't say that the angels are in a sort of beautific vision that language is simply that uh it's more or less the reward for those that have gone through this you know veil of tears who have struggled they've sought god and have been redeemed and then god resurrects them glorifies them and then they enjoy the full breadth of experiencing god you know that's one of the the beatitudes in fact rather angels were probably created with what john hick would call epistemic distance right so there's this idea that um they're more or less at arm's length they're not created with the full breadth of the overriding overwhelming um vision and beauty of god they are created at at arm's length and this provides them uh sufficient ambiguity that if they wanted to pursue goods for themselves then they could just overdo it as it were they could just strictly pursue goods for themselves and begin to flout other goods that they should be doing or or or pursuing and that becomes to their detriment and because that they end up putting them themselves over others then they sort of spiral deeper into this where eventually it just becomes a matter of you know they they fall from grace utterly and completely there was a good paper i cite in the book by william wood who wrestles with this and he's trying to follow on the heels of the uh anselmian tradition which you could read for free by the way anselm's day casual diboli he talks about a plausible route for an angel in the company of god to nevertheless fall from grace and we have to stop thinking about uh what that fall looked like prior to knowing what it was and what i mean by that is tradition says that satan was a prideful character we read in isaiah 14 and ezekiel 28 there are these taunts against the king of babylon the prince of tyre and it talks about these figures you know being elevating themselves in such lofty positions and they're they're conceited their exhaust their their exalting themselves but then god curses them and says you know you basically kicks them out and uh knocks them down despite their conceitedness work tradition tells us that the original sin was the sin of pride but quite frankly um none of these biblical passages definitively tell us about a fall of satan isaiah 14 ezekiel 28 these are way too controversial for us to put any confidence in that as as a true story of satan's fall and even if they were true stories to some extent or you know in a in a roundabout way um conceit or pride is never said to be the original sin we're actually never told what the original sin is we have to rely on passages like jude 6 and 2nd peter 2 4 which basically just give us the indication that they they uh basically gave up their position of authority but on what basis were not told and i think that this idea that they weren't created in a beautiful vision uh and basically were pursuing goods for themselves but did it inordinately so that could lead to a spiral effect in which case they could lose their innocence going back to uh something you said about the you were making a comparison between demonology and natural theology i think you'd put it in those terms and basically i think i i agree with your point that the arguments against the existence of demons just like the arguments against god maybe what they can do is instead of ruling out the existence of god or the existence of demons altogether maybe what they'll do is help us fine tune our concept of god or our concept of demons and rule out some other faulty views and so i think that i i agree with you there that in when we're thinking about a theology arguments against god or arguments against demons what they what these can do in in looking at them in a positive way is they can shave off some of like the untrue pictures of what demons and satan are like so i think that that i think that's pretty much what you you would agree with that right yes i i do and i tried to do this this was actually in some sense the objective of my doctoral dissertation in which i was more interested in the metaphysics of it all um culminating and talking about what demons can or cannot do so right i mean if demons could actually physically alter laws of physics or for example michael murray entertains this as a possible response to the problem of evil that satan could perturb the laws of physics or have causal input into the universe you know he could create disease and disaster and mess with god's creation in horrible ways and for satan to have that kind of power would suggest he's able to directly interact with the physical universe so at any turn if you're able to see that no we don't really see or rather we could really trace um physical disasters or bad things that happen to ordinary natural causes just saying if um then that would increasingly be perceived as evidence of their non-existence or at least inching one to be less impressed with their existence but i do think that we have to refine our understanding not in retreat to these criticisms but i think we got the story wrong from the beginning so let me just let everyone know where we are in this conversation what's sort of happened so far so we're about to get to his argument for the existence of demons the whole point of this is to give an argument for the reality of demons and i'm some people are saying that i'm not pushing back hard enough and i will there we haven't gotten to that section yet so we're looking at arguments against the reality of demons we've looked at a few so far and i want to talk about one more before we move on and this one comes from a guy dr neil degrasse tyson who's been featured on our channel not i haven't interviewed him but we've talked about him with some other people uh so what he says is that demonic possession is fake and that we all know that we're dealing with something like mental illness but i've got a quote from your book that i found really interesting here's the quote the causes of mental disorders in general are hotly disputed in the literature and contrary to the hopes of those skeptical of demonic possession do not bode well in leading one away from the possibility of demonic possession as a possible contributing cause in some of those cases so i'd just like to ask you to expound on that okay one of the things that was pretty surprising to me when i was researching this subject is attitudes about mental disorders mental illnesses and we see this in a binary way um you know secularist naturalists will say well we now know that uh you know this condition over here is dissociative identity disorder this condition over here is a um you know epileptic seizure this condition over here is you know a transitive disorder of some sort of schizophrenia and we treat that as though that is a diagnosis of a cause but the dirty little secret is that psychologists don't uh track mental disorders by causes because causes can't be derived we can't figure out what causes certain things and let me just interrupt myself briefly to say i'm not going to say nor do i think that mental disorders are caused by um demonic shenanigans or anything like that what i'm suggesting here is that uh mental disorders are not identified by ideologies they're not identified by what may or may not cause or give rise to these things rather they um as george graham has explained in his book the disordered mind explains that mental disorders are tracked in terms of what are called syndromal clusters basically familiar or family type symptoms that are exhibited but in very few cases are there any kind of of is there any kind of causality associated there are triggers there are causal pathways but there's not sort of like a singular causal etiology that hey look this is a natural cause that gives rise to a dissociative disorder we can't do that we can't even do that with something like depression depression can be triggered by a variety of different factors and some more than others so i don't think that just throwing out there without being very careful about it saying oh well this person is likely suffering from dissociative transitive disorder and therefore it's not a demon possession is doing a great disservice or completely misunderstands the literature that's out there what was interesting going back to my interview and this was maybe a good time to talk about it with father vince is he they have like a very okay so father vance if you don't know he's an actual exorcist working in the united states right now and they have a whole like list of guidelines for what they use in order to identify when someone or like a set of criteria to identify when someone is demon-possessed and he says that they are trained in the vatican like he had to go to rome in order to get his training for exorcism he and while he was there was crazy he he was there for what like three months and anyway he did he did a ton of exorcisms while he was there it was super interesting go watch the interview anyways the the point is that and i actually just lost my point so that's that's a lot of fun um i was gonna talk about well let me let me just ask you this and maybe i'll come back to it so go let's turn now for a moment and then i'll get back to the point as it comes to me so let's transition as we can to this uh to the arguments for the existence of demons and so one of those you cover you actually have two different chapters on the arguments four demons in your book and in the first chapter you're like okay here's some of the arguments that are sort of traditionally in literature they're not that good that's that's your diagnosis and then in the second chapter you give an argument that you think is actually a good argument that makes it sort of probable that demons exist so let's go through some of the ones that you think are not so good we'll start there okay again so there's a lot of parallels here with um you know the way philosophy of religion has treated the existence of god so i tried to be clever in my own way to you know hijack or utilize or co-op same some of the same uh argument designations and apply them so i have an on a logical argument that i bring up again these aren't really my arguments um but there there are onological arguments for the existence of satan but really those are brought up tongue-in-cheek in the literature people formulate onological arguments for the existence of satan not because they're trying to see if they get you to the person of satan but they're trying to they're trying to refute onological arguments for the existence of god by way of parody you know we all know of guanilo's objection about the perfect island if you can if you could lampoon the original argument and it gets you to an absurd thing then it goes to show you that there's a procedural fallacy somewhere and therefore you don't have to abide by the argument so um that's the only light in which you know onological arguments for the devil are raised and so i do talk about that uh i cast it in the original ensembian tradition although i'm sure it could be recast along the lines of norman malcolm or alvin planiga um but something along the lines of you know if if is it worse for a being to exist only in concept or in reality and you would think that it's worse for the being to actually exist in reality rather than in concept therefore the worst possible being must exist and i have a litany of reasons why um this argument just doesn't work um i think it's self-defeating um and not only that it's theologically objectionable because it to get you to the worst possible being would not be to get you to the person of satan as such it would get you to some full-blown anti-god it would be to construe god in the worst and most malevolent of terms did i talk about a cosmological argument this was you know somewhat popular in the middle ages though not really about satan it was more about using plenitude uh that god namely once and and would for the sake of a complete universe wants to create all different levels of being and he will not leave any gaps and by that one would mean okay so you have material objects trees and rocks on the one hand and then you have god completely on the other hand who's purely immaterial and holy other and then you have just a few steps up from trees and rocks you had animals and then you have human beings human beings being composites of body and soul but then we had this huge gap to god and so they suggested that for more elegant universe uh you would god would want to create beings then that were far more spiritual than composites of body and soul such as we have in human beings but not as you know holy other as god is so that leaves us with the realm of angels so god would create angels and i level my objections to that as well and um then finally i touch upon what i call diabolical exp yes before you get to that one i remember what i was going to say and then i'm going to segue into your to your last one that you want to talk about and also just want to recommend everyone go check out his book if you want to get more deep into what he's talking about here so what i was talking about i mentioned father vince and going over to rome and everything and so basically they've got all this criteria in order to determine whether or not someone is demon-possessed and what i liked about it was the fact that they they very rarely ever diagnose uh demon possession so what they do at first is they send them to a psychiatrist they make sure that they're not on drugs so they go through this like litany of testing before they determine that someone is demon-possessed and so i think that's actually really cool and really interesting that they do that i also think that that's probably the best way to do it if you know if you think that demonic possession is a real thing you could be treating someone for demonic possession when they don't need to be treated for that and so they could just be getting worse and worse and worse so they've got this whole criteria it's really really cool and i think that that's really good but it also relates to the to the point that you were making about mental health and how the causes are sort of unknown it's really really interesting stuff so going back to the second one or the last argument that you were about to talk about were were some of the stories of demons is that like experiences people have is kind of relating it to religious experience would you categorize all that together well i do bifurcate the experiences i have you know one subcategory is this you have diabolical harassments which you know people report um have reported over the last two millennia in particular having uh feeling like they've been harassed by evil spirits you know told they're in their darkest points in life told to do bad things and um if you're interested in an excellent survey of that i i recommend christopher cook's book um voices demonic and divine where he you may not agree with this conclusion i don't really agree with this conclusion but um the research he's done alone is is worth the purchase price and so that's that's one category of experience the other category of experience would be you know what i would call an invasion um this would be what we would identify as a possession case or a demonization a full demonization and in my book i quite frankly i provide space for these to have a contributing factor evidentially i just you know want to make sure the usual epistemic protocols are in place before we just simply take someone's word for it because we'll find ourselves in a position if we just willy-nilly accept someone's testimony hey i've been you know that had a double speak to me or something of that sort it's not enough just to accept it you know on its surface um i think we just have to be careful because you know you have to be able to adjudicate that as you would say an alien abduction report and you don't you just want to believe anything that everyone tells you so i think the usual usual epistemic protocols have to be in place but i do think that um as the priest that you had mentioned you know those engage and i actually cite richard gallagher a psychiatrist um who has participated in some of these catholic exorcisms and he went from being a skeptic to a believer so and i cite him favorably i say look this is uh this is something interesting evidentially interesting um it's just not going to move the needle for some people in the same way that those who have religious experiences may not move the needle for others i want to let everyone know that we're going to do some q a so if you have a question for dr guthrie then just either wait to put it in live chat until later or send it as a super chat and we've already got a few super chats in that we got to get through so that may be the only type of questions we're going to be able to take today but i just want to let you know that we're going to do some q a probably in another five 10 minutes um so back to the the interview that i did with with father vince so he told a story of this person and it was like i don't he didn't identify their gender but this person was apparently very small and they as told by him he like he or she went and lifted up like a desk over their head and this is the story he tells and other people saw this and so do you like just based on what i just said to you do you find that evidentially valuable at all do you think that that should sway someone at all or would you say be skeptical well i mean when i say be skeptical i'm not saying automatically think that there's no experience behind it or anything like that but i would say that uh you know we would want to know the details for sure the size of the desk the ability of the the person in question we're not even sure what the gender is it's fairly hard to adjudicate already and we know that there there's a lot of discussion about things like excited delirium where that doesn't mean you're not being harassed by a demonic presence but it could tap into the same you know physio physiological ideologies that might give rise to something like an excited delirium phenomenon where somebody could exhibit you know a great deal of strength and so that in and of itself i would be interested um to know more for sure well let me talk about one last thing and then we'll move on to uh to your argument the argument that you think actually works for the existence of demons so you you touched briefly on testimony and the evidential value of testimony you also said something like you don't want to just accept it otherwise we're going to run into all sorts of wacky beliefs so i know that skeptics watching this are probably going to clip out what you just said and then like use it as an argument against christianity i like already know that's about to happen so i wanted to to camp on that for a second and get some clarity from you like what do you mean what is the evidential value of testimony do you hold to a sort of principle of testimony like we find in richard swinburn's work where he basically argues that we should accept what other people tell us unless we have reason to doubt what they have to say so what is your like unpack for me what your view is of testimony and if you have a principle of testimony then uh unpack that as well yeah i would say that something along the lines of what richard swinburne you know identifies as the principle of credulity um i mean all of us strike me as is all well and good and they're going to serve the person who has the experience more so than an outsider and i think that's the general problem with religious experience is that it's all well and good for the person who has the experience but to communic for me to communicate that to you or for you to communicate that to someone else it may not serve um something for them but yes i think that you know if if it has to pass the smell test of course because there are a lot of familiar things that we could appeal to somebody talks about an extraordinary event happening to them if you have a more familiar and usual explanation that cannot be ruled out or is not likely ruled out then that is something to consider but you see that's the thing with when we look at experiences of god or eyewitness experience to jesus's resurrection and so forth is that those things are exhausted there there are no better explanations um there is no better way to account perhaps for a certain religious experience that one might have other than that it is likely god you know communing with them or speaking to them so absolutely i think that that can happen and as i said i pointed out richard gallagher in particular as if he's and i assume he's telling the truth that if he's telling us the truth that's pretty impressive because when we're looking at whether or not any given putative possession case is in fact a possession case we're engaging in another form of intelligent design right i mean we're trying to figure out is this episode diabolically designed so to speak and um philip weeby and richard gallagher and others you know they offer some of the usual things that i think would give us gravity for thinking that there's something legitimately here like if the victim starts speaking a language they couldn't possibly have known um that would be i think a strong indication that there would be demonic presence and the nice thing about well i say nice but it just purely in terms of the the uh epistemic contribution of the experience is that typically when people have religious experiences some of the criticism tends to be well how do you know you know you're not hearing from the devil or how do you know it's not you know a diabolical kind of experience instead and you can't really say that with a diabolical experience it is a diabolical experience it's not like god might be intervening instead to give you a false experience that it's diabolical so yes i think that there is certainly a lot of space for um one to have personal experience both in terms of the diabolical harassment as well as invasions and again you have multiple people typically present at an exorcism which bolsters the case and already we see a disconnect between those kinds of encounters and something like say an alien abduction story where only the the victim um you know claims the experience was there nobody else was there and we're supposed to just believe the person you know that's different than your typical exorcism case where a variety of people tend to be involved and are on the same page all right let's get to your argument for the one that you think is a good argument for the existence of demons you call it the historical argument and so just give me a brief recap of what that looks like and unfortunately i think we're going to have to turn to questions pretty quickly here so uh just summarize basically that and then i'll push people toward the book so they can get a more fleshed out view of it okay very good so i would just sort of put in lay terms i would say that um this is uh very similar to um basically validating jesus's self-understanding this is really an extension of that and so the argument stands or falls really on the credibility of jesus himself so understanding that the gospel reports are in some sense memoirs or reportages or biographies of a historical jesus then we see that he is said to have performed certain actions and made statements that entail that that unclean spirits or demons exist they seem to suggest the reality of demonic beings he's performing exorcisms uh you know all through the the gospels um and he's treating demonic beings as though they actually exist and then of course the fact that jesus is is vindicated by god by the miracles that he performs and ultimately in his resurrection provides supreme credibility so if divine approval through miracles is then given to jesus then god is endorsing it if god is endorsing it then i take it as true wow you weren't kidding that was that was really quick so okay let me let me just push back a little bit on this and then we'll get to some questions so it seems like you've got a lot of work ahead of you into in order to argue for this thesis so with something like the testimony of someone who you know an exorcist or someone who's been in the room with an exorcist during one of these exorcisms it seems like all you've got to do is basically just tell the testimony and like that's it that's that's all you got to do and then people can weigh it for themselves or like these other people that you mentioned maybe they can go in and experience it for for themselves so that seems like a more direct path but in this but in this case in this argument that you're giving you've not only got to make it a connection between jesus and like what he did and his self claims and then also in the book you you go through i think four different passages where he's interacting with demons so you've got to do all that work but then you've also got to defend the reliability of the gospels in a lot of these cases so it seems like a really convoluted and not not in a bad way but just in a in the sense of like you've got to do a lot of work in order to defend this argument so is that something i take it that's something you're comfortable doing yes i think that's what ultimately has to be done for the best foot forward i think is the the claims that jesus makes consistently they're all in by all lights they're all embedded in the the original portrait of the historical jesus and um the fact that and this is again if you're already convinced that christianity is true based on the resurrection this really isn't any additional heavy lifting here it's just that oh yes in addition to the other claims jesus made about himself he also sees himself as an exorcist and if he sees himself as an exorcist of course he is of uh uh implying and if not detailing specifically the existence of such beings as demons but yes i think that that's absolutely right i would love for there to be a fast track um argument as it were to say look this personal testimony tells me that the demons exist and i'm happy to do that and i leave that open in the book i don't close the door on that at all i'm not critical i absolutely provide space for people to say look i have a personal experience of being possessed or being harassed i know that the parkland shooter for example was you know they have recordings of him supposedly hearing evil spirits that might have in some sense facilitated some of his um bad actions uh i mean i'm open to all of these things and yes i would love to fast track this but i have to you know rely once again on this the strongest evidence i think this is the stronger evidence the gospel portrait and then um come with me and the other stuff all right so here's one last thing i'll say and i hope you don't take this uh i hope this isn't offensive at all so here's here's what i think i could see someone saying in response to like the thesis behind your book it sounds like if i was to put it in a nutshell and just to summarize it is at least this this section of the argument that you think is a good argument for the existence of demons it sounds like instead what you're arguing is something like this if christianity is true then demons exist and like that's kind of where the argument stops because in the book you don't really flesh out a whole like argument for gospel of reliability or the reliability of the new testament so i think in order to really defend your thesis you'd have to defend not only that conditional premise but then also the premise that christianity is true in order to get the conclusion therefore demons probably exist or something along those lines so in reality what you do in your book is you just argue if christianity is true then demons exist but that in itself is not super interesting so how would you respond to that yeah well i don't think that's completely wrong as i do acknowledge in the book i defer to the arguments say for the resurrection of jesus and so forth but just to keep in mind the scope of the book didn't permit me to basically go off on a to focus on that too much the book is trying to take on a lot of territory here in fact it begins with surveying history how philosophers in antiquity to the contemporary period you know have treated the subject realists demonic realists in particular and then and i give a little bit of theological backdrop and data about you know what are we entitled to think based on what scripture has to say and then it's this metal section where we have arguments against the existence of demons and then i talk about arguments in favor which i think is capstone by the present argument from i mean i wouldn't just say oh because christianity is true other than the fact that if there's good reasons to think that jesus was raised from the dead um obviously points to christianity's truth then yes that would be i suppose another way of framing that but that then i i segway into then wanting to talk about if these beings do exist what are they and what are they capable of doing and that's really what i wanted to focus on as it was the subject of my dissertation but i fully acknowledge that shortcoming that i punt as it were to um the fact that much ink has already been spilled on the subject of defending the resurrection of jesus yeah that's that is a good point there are there's there is a lot of work out there on that subject i also wanted to just let or pause a moment and just encourage the audience if you're watching this and you don't think that demons exist i want you to think about what is your best argument against the existence of demons i'm not saying like where do you currently sit i'm not asking you to reflect on your own like psychology your personal psychological states your mental events that are happening in your brain right now i want you to think about what is the best argument that you have against the existence of demons i think that if you sit down and really think about that you're probably not going to come up with a lot you're probably going to come up with i think what most people come up with which is own their own personal incredulity personal incredulity is not an argument so yeah just wanted to make that note yeah it might be i i suspect it'd be along the lines of trying to counter punch by saying well okay so can you disprove the existence of fairies or can you just prove the existence of this you know paranormal thing over here and if you can't do that then why should you expect me to do it with respect to demons all right let's move on to some questions so here's from here's one from meow meow meow great name he says doctor please comment on early and you're going to have to help me out with some of these abbreviations here i don't know if you're going to know who these are doctor please comment on early sprs work on trans mediumship for example khaki and gp sittings etc demon possession human spirits or entirely from living people with did mpd and latent esp does this make any sense to you well i recognize the did as dissociative identity disorder multiple personality disorders what it used to be called um i'm having a trouble processing the question here that's that is pretty impregnable abbreviations but yeah but he's citing stephen broad and michael siddith and um which is interesting because these fellas don't see eye to eye broad is you know he accepts um paranormal activity psi experiences as he calls them suddath criticizes this and i actually would side with sudath more along these lines i would i would criticize the vast majority of of you know paranormal experiences as it were um i wouldn't simply think that things like um psi experiences you know my ability to psycho kinetically interact with something in another part of the world or whatever would be likely something that i could do or that anyone would do but yeah i don't know i would have to sit down and decode that question more yeah sorry about that meow meow meow thank you for sending in your super chat i wish we could do more with it um well all right let's get to another one and this one is just a nice comment so he says he or she just watch the interview you did with father father lampert very humble no-nonsense guy peace and blessings thank you guys uh thank you so much for sending the super chat and watching and yeah it was it was an awesome interview it's a lot of fun this one's pretty cool too i gotta say all right uh matt boyer only semi-relevant but a topic i'm interested in what are your thoughts on the nephilim okay well for those that don't know what that is that derives from nephilim is the hebrew term that refers to some unspecified beings in genesis chapter 6. so this is a big conversation uh amongst theologians so i can only give you a real quick thing here we don't know precisely what these nephilim are um are they extraordinary supernatural beings are they giants maybe uh some hebrew scholars see this as a reference not so much their physical stature as it is a reference to the fact that they are something like a giant of history a great warrior perhaps and in genesis chapter 6 this the reason why this is often brought up and it's very popular to talk about this i know that michael heiser hebrew scholar old testament scholar talks about this quite a bit and that's because genesis 6 looks like it could suggest that angels fell from grace and then had sexual intercourse with human women and then produced hybrid offspring called the nephilim and then the nephilim were judged and killed off and then their spirits were left to roam the earth well i don't think that there's theological justification for that interpretation i do actually talk about this in the book i spent a lot of time on it because it does serve as a sort of counter punch to the ultimate points that i'm aiming at i don't think that that demons have the ability to physically interact with the material world i think that they only cognitively interact with uh human beings and that's how they influence us both in terms of harassments and possessions and so this extraordinary story from genesis chapter 6 which says nothing about demons or fallen angels explicitly you have to do a lot of import work you have to see the phrase sons of god you have to assume that genesis 6 is then thus talking about angels here instead of human beings just so described and you have to of course genesis 6 being in the first 11 chapters of genesis already makes the genre suspicious in terms of it's not giving pure history there may be some mythographic elements that are imported um there are just too many questions for us to have much confidence in what the nephilim are fair enough all right let's get on to another question this one is from sils fredo sarabia hi doctor based on your view on the existence of demons and satan quoting dr william lane craig how could an all good god cause something so intrinsically evil and opposed to god any bible verses that could be used well i would say that it's probably as an analogy would be to look at the garden of eden i mean if you're okay with the idea without assuming any sort of predecessor if you're okay with the idea that someone like an adam and eve were morally innocent could suddenly fall prey to temptation and then become evil then i think that there's a story that could be just so story that could be told that could accommodate this concern so god doesn't create satan as an evil being he creates him as an innocent being which is different than creating someone as righteous someone who would be incapable of moral wrongdoing but if you create someone in a state of innocence though they're not morally guilty of anything it doesn't mean that therefore every decision that they will make will be morally good you can make decisions that would lead you astray and as you lead yourself astray then of course you could spiral downward into more sinister beliefs and acts so uh i think we can retain the idea that god doesn't create anything directly evil he creates these beings as angels innocently and they fall from grace and they become evil and i hesitate calling them you know intrinsically evil i know satan is perceived as the antithesis to christ but it's not like he's the worst possible being or uh that he you know that there's an essential property of evilness and satan embodies that or something along those lines all right next question is from god or the world and they ask what are your views on ufos and aliens are these actually demonic manifestations i wouldn't think so now the model that i'm defending that i defend in the book or the conclusions that i have derived um artists say once again that demons are incapable of these kinds of powers to manipulate physics or to you know craft together um flying saucers or anything of that sort so i would say if there's ever any evidence for ufos i'm more inclined to think that maybe there really are ufos not that there would be demonic beings that have engineered them i just don't think that they have that that capability um to do that that's interesting all right jackson howard he says if demons exist which metaphysical view of the mind best explains the possibility of demon possession well i would say that it is and i can only speak in terms of analogy i mean none of us truly know how you know what the metaphysics are of pure spirituality but i would say that possession of course is somewhat misleading it suggests ownership and really it's a level of cognitive influence dominance as it were so i could simply say that there could be enough cognitive influence such that would dominate someone to come to believe something that's completely false or wrong and this malevolent spirit could therefore have a sort of dominating control over this individual that would be one thing another thing is if it were um like in a typical possession case i guess there's sort of like a violent intrusion and again i i would only say that i could only speculate that that again would be um you know a cognitive assault on on someone's mind uh and therefore their soul but it wouldn't be like taking over their body it wouldn't be like a a hand going into a sock puppet and then controlling them that way as is you know traditionally understood it's strictly through the avenue of cognitive interaction with the victim's mind what about the case that you mentioned earlier though about the person who could just speak in another language what would be going on in a case like that well i would say that again the cognitive influence from it would be demonic presence could supply any and all information um again they could they could dominate they could take control by means of communicating directly with you know the person's mind overwhelming them and uh that's how they would control their bodies in return rather than trying to explain you know they're right rather than try to explain a possession in terms of a demon physically interacting with their body they're going through um their mind and again i couldn't begin to spell out all of the deep mechanics of what that might look like but that's that's the best answer i could muster on that well this is actually a related question and uh look at that 666. if demons can speak dead languages through their oblivious host why aren't such miracles recorded as proof for language experts to authenticate i'm not why aren't these uh why aren't such miracles recorded as proof for language experts to authenticate you mean with that why wouldn't the language experts go and authenticate the languages i think well i mean i i don't see why not i don't see why someone couldn't do that if you have a language expert that's available and you're interested in supplying additional validation why not my understanding is of some of these possession cases they report speaking latin and we have quite a few folks especially in the catholic church that already know the language and can identify it and but yeah i mean i don't know i wouldn't be i wouldn't be opposed to doing something like that if you had one handy all right here's another question from god or the word or god or the world since demons can take possession of people and even animals mark 5 11-13 can they then therefore take possession of other matter like technology well i i find it really interesting about the animal possession because it looks like you're citing the the question here is probably citing the garrison demoniac episode where you know jesus delivers the man who comes from the tombs from legion these demons and then uh they transmigrate over to a herd of nearby pigs i'm not so sure the demons do that on their own uh they actually plead with jesus you know to send us over to those pigs so it could be that that jesus did that um on their behalf um but again um the fact that it so uh animals could have souls of a sort and uh i would say that yes uh maybe the the higher level animals could be influenced by i mean potentially so i have no idea could be uh potentially influenced by demonic presences just like human beings can but that's because there's the presence of some kind of soul but technology if you don't think that that technological beings artificial intelligence have souls then no i would say that that would have to be an instance of a direct psychokinetic interaction which i don't think is likely all right i think this is going to be our last question for today from ricardo hidalgo he says what scientific experiment would you propose to do observation and data in order to have solid evidence for the existence of demons what kind of scientific well again i would i i would say that if you're talking about uh because this is very delimited application if you're talking about utilizing the the tools of science then you would be relegating yourself perhaps to people who have personal encounters or experiences and then trying to find some sort of if possible laboratory conditions of observation and whatnot and try to adjudicate the presence of the being as ha as exhibiting certain kinds of properties like speaking a a foreign language or positively responding to an exorcism you know there's all i could say is it would have a very limited application in that regard but the argument that i actually happen to prefer is not scientific non-scientific at all it's um based strictly on the testimony of the gospels and the uh the riticality of the resurrection of jesus and that can take you to the uh belief that demons actually exist and all without having the apparatus of science necessary yeah what this makes me think about immediately off the top of my head is with scientific experiments i mean science in general is really concerned about what happens when things are sort of left alone the natural laws of nature like what happens from one state to another state the scientific laws that are required to make those two states obtain but when it comes to activity of agents like personal agents like that's a little bit difficult it's a little bit different we're gonna need some different tools we're thinking about what a person would do or what's happening with demon possession something like that because we're talking about free will agents and so it's going to complex it's going to make things a little bit more complex and what i think about as a parallel here are some of the studies the scientific studies that have been done about prayer and whether or not prayer actually works and one of the criticisms that a lot of christian philosophers will level at these experiments is to say that look god is a free agent he doesn't always have to heal someone or not heal someone and so these these studies are only going to be so valuable they're not going to give you all of this insight into the the workings that are going on behind the scenes there's all sorts of things that might be going on that we're just because we're dealing with a free person a god it's just it it makes things a little bit more complex a little bit more difficult to like nail down if you want a scientific experiment you may be wanting the wrong thing for the wrong for the yeah maybe asking for the wrong methodology here anyways i would say the scientific the site you know any kind of scientific method isn't going to certainly falsify anything as well in this regard so yeah i would caution not to rely purely on uh as if science is really the only only or primary way that would lend credence to this i think that there are avenues that can in the case of personal experiences possession cases maybe there are ways to track and do research and many have and are fairly convinced by it i commend to you richard gallagher who has done just that and i think he just put out his book this year um i don't remember what it's entitled but um i'm making to get my hands on it yeah let's just broaden our our tool set from the limits of science and just go all the way to the limits of philosophy let's just use everything that that's at our disposal all right that's going to do it for us today thank you so much for coming on this was really really cool i asked you before we went live what are some of the other things that you're interested in so why don't we close out with that what are some other things that interest you beyond writing books about demons oh long walks on the beach uh candlelight dinners no um i i really enjoy uh following the philosophy of religion in general um i spent a lot of time with the kalam cosmological argument uh i also have and i've taught courses in philosophy of religion and existentialism that's actually something that's near and dear to my heart meaning of life i'd like to talk about that in um i've taught courses along those lines i'd like to talk about that subject and read on it and also ethics uh and so i've spent a lot of time on that as well so kind of cast my net wide great well we'll have to have you on for uh another subject and let me know guys what do you think about demons if you've watched the other interview with father vince or if you've completed this interview here let me know what you think in the comments so write in the comments i believe in demons or i don't believe in demons and then if you want you can provide some additional comments on like why and what's going on in your mind but anyways thank you so much dr guthrie for coming on capturing christianity it's been a pleasure thank you for having me i appreciate it all right let me talk to the audience for just a second so if you guys have enjoyed this uh this interview today and we'd like to you would like to see this ministry continue to grow continue to do what it's doing interviewing all these professional philosophers hosting debates creating videos all of the things that you're seeing on this channel the best way to support this ministry is to head over to patreon.com capturing christianity link to that is in the description of this video and you can actually become a berean that is our private facebook group that we have for supporters of the ministry it is hands down and i'm not just saying this just to say it but it is literally the best facebook group that exists we have and everyone in it would probably agree and they would they would say the same thing it's not because i'm in it or because they're in it it's just because the group of people and the conversations that we have it's just it's an amazing group so to join the marines become a brand uh just donate five dollars a month to this ministry to continue make making sure that this stuff happens and you can become a brilliant we also have a lot of cool things and uh we'll talk about that later got a lot of cool things coming up on this channel so support the ministry if you find value in it also subscribe i don't really talk about subscribing enough but subscribe to the channel if you're watching this and you have it what are you waiting on it's free and so yeah that's going to do it for us today thank you so much for tuning in see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Capturing Christianity

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Id: -SoxvRM9CCI

Length: 68min 23sec (4103 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020